tips for a successful campaign with low op players and dm.

[bjoern]

I've been with the same group for years (12) and they are all waaay lower optimization than I am.
I dont need to describe the kind of problems that we have sometimes......

Anyone in a similar situation? How do you make it work for everyone? Still fun for you yet not overshadowing the other players or making the DM pull his hair out.

[Toilet Cobra]

My group is the same way. On the rare opportunities I get to act as a player, I roll something low-tier and fun. Pick a concept that doesn't get considered by "serious" players and enjoy.

You'll only run into trouble if a.) you just can't have fun knowing your character could be stronger than it is, and b.) your DM refuses to take the relative power of the party into consideration and treats you like a high optimization group.

[johnbragg]

I"m sure you've heard all of the following, and done half of it.

Go with "optimization challenges"--turn a Monk into a melee beast, a Healer into something interesting, a Marshal, fix a Swashbuckler.

Or go thematic. Use a full caster class, but theme everything off of an element or energy type or school or domain.

Basically, after a certain point of system knowledge, you can't help optimizing without just holding back, which is bad for roleplaying--your PC is trying his best, so if you're not, that's an un-fun conflict.

So either "optimize down"--take a Tier 5 class and build it into a powerhouse ("Look out! They've got a Marhsal!") or "optimize sideways"--set thematic liimitations for yourself and then go to town. ("Sorry, I'm a Fire Mage. Polymorph and Teleport are off the table.)

[sideswipe]

the above. or optimise heavily like i do in a support role. im currently playing a war weaver that focuses on buffing and BFC. since the rest of the party are low OP low system mastery with one exception of a slightly mid OP mid mastery, i specialise in making them GOD's! hey really weak assassin, would you like to be -blank- with everyone getting -blank- and -blank- and -blank- buffs? all in the first round?

good, now go my party of low OP level 8's. go defeat the CR 16 optimised vampire boss that we weren't meant to fight for about 5 levels.

hint - they won.

[johnbragg]

I've been with the same group for years (12) and they are all waaay lower optimization than I am.
I dont need to describe the kind of problems that we have sometimes......

Anyone in a similar situation? How do you make it work for everyone? Still fun for you yet not overshadowing the other players or making the DM pull his hair out.

Looks like Sideswipe may have issues with this one.

[sideswipe]

Looks like Sideswipe may have issues with this one.

well... he did pit us against it because we were moaning that we wanted a fight and one was not planned for about 2 sessions (it was the first session) so he said "OK. you asked for it" and set us out to get a member killed essentially. so i stepped in :smallsmile:

most of the time i only cast 2-3 spells a combat. and maybe another 2 in harder ones. i mostly prepare utility, buffs and BFC.

plus my DM has no problems with the level i play at. and is thankful i took a back seat. if i had a noob DM or one that knows very little i would play an optimised true namer. then i cant break anything until lvl 20. and if he hasn't learned by then its his fault lol.

[Sacrieur]

Good god yes. I facepalmed while a previous group I was apart of spent their time trying their darnedest to make Sorcerer as low tier as they can.

All of my builds were based on battlefield control because of it, so they could feel like they're the ones winning.

"Why did you get color spray when you could have gotten magic missile?" they asked, "And you chose conjuration as your school?!"

It would sometimes get me in trouble with the DM because I could get out of things too easily, I had to learn to intentionally sit back and only act as a last resort. No appreciation for poor Conjurer. Much sad :(

[Elkad]

I spent much of the last campaign turning my conjurer wizard into a buffbot for his Imp.

Wizard, Monk (who I talked into going swordsage at level 3 at least), and a low-op Duskblade. (Oh, and a poison dusk lizardman Healer henchman we picked up about L5).

Rather than picking a permanent theme for my character, I'd pick a different one before each session.

One night I'd use solid fog+black tentacles, the next night I'd keep rearranging the battlefield with transpositions, then walls/blockades everywhere, then nothing but summons, then all necromantic debuffs, etc.

By the time I'd used up the easy ideas, I'd have a new level of spells to do it all over again with. Every fight I'd confound the DM with something, and then cheer for the muscle while my Imp took potshots with her bow.
The night he sent a bunch of creatures with a short-range free action teleport vs us, I'd cast Anticipate Teleportation as a daily buff for the first time. Pretty sure it was an attempt to get around my grappling apes, black tentacles, solid fog, or whatever else I'd been using recently. I had none of those memorized that night.


New campaign we just started (same players) is a Druid, Sorc, and I'm playing a standard core Horizon Tripper (and my first Dwarf in 30something years of D&D). Going for the "play the hell out of something low-tier" mode this time.

[Zweisteine]

"Why did you get color spray when you could have gotten magic missile?" they asked, "And you chose conjuration as your school?!"
I almost want to be in that group...

Did they ever figure it out?

[Sacrieur]

I almost want to be in that group...

Did they ever figure it out?

The DM sure did.

The group did not. I was like a ninja.

[Grand Poobah]

Use lower stats than the rest of the party. Not maximising say your primary caster stat can make a difference to save or die/suck spells.
Come up with a character concept which is sub optimal. I created a barbarian3/druid3 for a game who'd been cursed with a permanent reduce person. He got a wolf AC and his feats were all ride/mount related instead PA etc.

[Darth Ultron]

You don't have to optimize, of course. Just play a fun character.

One fix I've used as a DM starts in character creation: first, the player rolls for abilities and puts them in each ability slot. Then they randomly roll for race and class. And randomly roll for feats. The end result is a very random, but very unoptimized character.

Another fix was to give the optimized character a curse. A great example was Bob and his sorcerer Zom. He was a crazy optimizer that dominated games and ruined the fun for everyone else.....but he was otherwise a nice guy. So before the game, he asked me how to fix this, with him not giving up his optimization. I gave him the haunted template....with a twist: anything the character killed almost immediately came back, as a ghost, and attacked him. So, the more he killed, the more problems he made for himself. And for one more twist: if he did not act during something like combat, his own spells would rage against him and harm him. So like burning hands would cause him fire damage. The end result was Zom never dominated the game, and Bob got to throw himself into role playing a tortured soul.

[PlatinumVixen]

When I'm in a low-op or newer group (and I'll be honest, in high-op as well sometimes) I tend to go heavy on the healing and buffing route. It's probably not a choice that's fun for every player, but there's something very satisfying about turning a battle around by buffing lower-op characters or new players. Sort of feels like using your optimization powers for good instead of evil in a weird way.

[Troacctid]

My strategy is to go for a build that is really super-obvious and archetypal and exactly what the game designers expected you to do. Rip it straight from a sample pre-built NPC statblock if you have to.

(I've used this defense before in Magic: The Gathering to some success. "Dude, why are your decks always so overpowered?" "Um, this is a preconstructed deck. Literally right out of the box. All I did was add a couple Guildgates to help with the mana." "...Oh.")

[bjoern]

My strategy is to go for a build that is really super-obvious and archetypal and exactly what the game designers expected you to do. Rip it straight from a sample pre-built NPC statblock if you have to.

(I've used this defense before in Magic: The Gathering to some success. "Dude, why are your decks always so overpowered?" "Um, this is a preconstructed deck. Literally right out of the box. All I did was add a couple Guildgates to help with the mana." "...Oh.")

Sadly, in my group, a human barb x , with power attack, cleave, and great cleave is overpowering. As he can just smack stuff for ~100 damage per swing and switch to lawn mower mode when needed.

Like I said low op lol.

Like a half orc bard who thinks he's a rogue.
An elf sorcerer illusionist who's deadliest spell is phantom foe.



I like the heal/buffbot idea.
Make it my mission to make sure no one in the party has more than 10hp missing.

[Doctor Awkward]

Bards with a Marshal dip can be effective in situations like this. So can specialist Transmuter Wizards/Incantatrix/War Weaver. If you are spending your combat rounds acting as a force multiplier, then you can just sit back and let the party do it's thing, and they will feel like they won, which is the point. Handling the encounters would be crass. Let the mortals have their fun.

[Flickerdart]

Play a wizard. A classic wizard, with uber BC spells, polymorphing into hydras, turning your familiar into gold, that kind of thing.

Then don't use any of them. Buy a staff, get some ASF-reduced armor, and walk around in melee hitting things. Maybe you'll have buffed yourself up beforehand, maybe not.

When the going gets tough, that's when you pull out your trump cards and transmute the opposition into garden gnomes.

[(Un)Inspired]

The DM sure did.

The group did not. I was like a ninja.

A ninja with Color Spray? My God...

[jjcrpntr]

I tend to have this problem with my players. They all "optimize" to an extent (whatever they want to do they want to do it as well as possible). But I have one player that powergames the heck out of things. For example our party for awhile was Paladin, random character that died and the guy made a monk, Cleric that was basically a heal/knowledge bot, Ranger, a Magus and a fighter. The ranger decides to retire the character and comes to the table with his wizard and openly tells me that he is going to try and break the game.

Ended up not being that big of a deal as his died, but it can be difficult when one person can so easily overshadow everyone else. To his credit he often went out of his way to avoid doing just that. Though apparently he was starting to get to levels where the "i'm going to break the game" spells start to come available.

[atemu1234]

The DM sure did.

The group did not. I was like a ninja.

All the wizards were kung-fu fighting...

[Metahuman1]

Play a wizard. A classic wizard, with uber BC spells, polymorphing into hydras, turning your familiar into gold, that kind of thing.

Then don't use any of them. Buy a staff, get some ASF-reduced armor, and walk around in melee hitting things. Maybe you'll have buffed yourself up beforehand, maybe not.

When the going gets tough, that's when you pull out your trump cards and transmute the opposition into garden gnomes.

This is a good suggestion.

Another good suggestion would be a Trip Monkey - the Knockdown feat off the SRD, and with a bit of flavor of the Jack-be-nimble build (Maybe TWF with Kusarigama's?) and using Stone Power and/or improved Combat Expertise in place of power attack, and the Stand Still feat. You knock them down (And get them to stay there.) and don't die, which helps the party (Hey, you can flank him AND get the high Ground if your smart about it AND he's prone to boot!) while making you do precious little if any HP damage, so they get to feel awesome.

Suggestion 3, pick up Bard, dip 2 levels for Seeker of the Song, take a couple of hits of Extra Music, and optimize your inspire courage (Including picking up Melodic Casting and maybe Subsonics early. If the DM won't agree that Subsonics let's you inspire courage in a silenced area, get lingering song instead.). Do your music, make everyone better at stuff, focus your skills on knowledge skills so you can tell people all about the things there fighting, and drop buff spells and battle field control/debuff spells with Melodic casting.

[dextercorvia]

To his credit he often went out of his way to avoid doing just that. Though apparently he was starting to get to levels where the "i'm going to break the game" spells start to come available.

Tell me, how did you manage to start the game before 1st level?

[Flickerdart]

Tell me, how did you manage to start the game before 1st level?
To be entirely fair, a 1st level caster doesn't break the game, just the encounters he faces.

[Metahuman1]

Oh, thought of another one. Though this might require a certain mindset.

Play a Cleric (Possibly a cloistered cleric if you want to knowledge monkey on the side.), and pick up Spontaneous Domain AFC, and the healing Domain. Then pick up the sun Domain, and go into Radiant Servant of Pelor.

Next, pick up DMM: Persist, and ONLY use it on Lesser Vigor for the party. (And yourself but hey, everyone has it it's not a big deal.)

And pick up Chain, Double and Twin spell, and that feat combo to get touch spells to work at range. And pick up DMM for each of them. (Maybe pick of healing reserve later for flavor.)

Now, pick up Nightsticks and/or Reliquary Holy Symbols. Lot's and Lot's and Lot's of them. Enough to be able to use ALL of those meta magic feats excluding Persist every time you cast a healing spell, and to be able to Chain and Persist Lessor vigor on the whole party to boot.

Lastly, make sure you have lots of prepared spell slots dedicated to fixing status conditions at all times, remove diseases, neutralize poison, things like that.


Congrats, your THE greatest heal bot the party could ever wish for, and there HP is at worst a per encounter Resource. And you need not fear being called out for being too good at healing as a general rule.